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Wednesday, November 9, 2016

NaNoWriMo 2016: Write What You Know, Part 2

This is my first draft for NaNoWriMo 2016 novel Write What You Know. It's only a rough draft with very minimal editing and will, more than likely, contain, typos, grammatical errors, plot holes, or conflicting descriptions. It also includes notes to myself and excerpts from the novel the MC is writing that I try to indicate through various formatting that doesn't always translate well with my limited html skills. Furthermore, this particular novel is... there's no delicate way to put this... this novel is fucked up. So, especially in this rough draft crazed sort of NaNoWriMo way of writing, it may be difficult to read or follow. I'm still posting it here because I want to shed more light on the process of writing to encourage and inspire other writers or readers who are interested. To learn more about this project, or my daily NaNoWriMo postings, please read Day 1-7.

In college she read an article, maybe written in the 60’s? 70’s? Whenever, back in the day. Long before cell phones, and personal portable gaming systems, and 7 billion people on the planet, and ramped up commercialism like the marketing industry is run by a meth head on a binge. The author might have been complaining about something as simple and innocent as boomboxes or loud people. Christie really couldn’t remember but the article or personal essay or whatever it was was about the quickly disappearing quiet spaces. Or maybe it was about green spaces or maybe it was somehow connected between the two.

The writer basically said it was a shame because we all needed these quiet public spaces. Spaces for reflection and communion and silence. Maybe it was something about churches. That didn’t sound right. Churches weren’t green or open.

She wanted some place to retreat from conversation, and the vroom vroom vroom of cars, and the constant noise noise noise. Maybe she was remembering the Grinch who was green and hated the noise of Christmas. The Whos and their who-trumpets.

Maybe next time someone asked, Christie would say Nikki was based on the Grinch. All those previous answers were lies to cover up the embarrassing truth about her very unkid friendly vampire, seductress punk, murdering girlboss bitch having her true roots in a Dr. Seuss story. The truth was all the answers were lies. Nikki’s inspiration was a secret she’d never tell. A truth buried deeper than the article from college she couldn’t remember.

Christie wished she could go back in time and shake the hand of the woman who wrote that essay she read in college. Then, punch her in the face for not doing anything more about it than write a fucking useless essay that colleges forced students to read and write their own fucking useless essays and continue running a fucking essay mill but never doing anything about the god damn noise.

1am

A mid-price room in a mid-price hotel for a middling author. That’s what they said to her when she requested a better room for the tour. If you want better room, write a better seller. She kicked the white crisp hotel sheets off of her for the third time and sweating like a whore in church turned onto her side.

Christie didn’t care what they said about her or her writing, that wasn’t the problem. With four books under her belt already and a fifth one her way, she, at least, was happy with her steady numbers.

1:23am

The problem was the noise. Mid-priced rooms in mid-priced hotels weren’t very sound proofed. And in one of the noisiest cities on the planet, even at midnight on a Wednesday, the New York City noise was thunderous and constant. She was shivering, couldn’t stop. It was freezing in here. She pulled the blankets up to her chin. She considered calling the front desk for an extra blanket but flopped over to her stomach instead.

2:26am

The problem was the tour. She didn’t want this tour. What was she even promoting? Her new book was months away. She was going to every bookstore still standing hoping that no one forgot her in between. Pimping the N’Raged series and talking about herself in general to anyone who’d listen. Like a street preacher wearing a sandwich board proclaiming The End is Nigh. She hated touring. She hated reading from her own books, she hated signing them, she hated answering questions from fans that were never meant to have answers. She didn’t have time to figure out if Nikki Vampyro would still be with Danny Dracon if he hadn’t been killed by Fontana Michaelson in the first book (or maybe Nikki herself?), she needed to spend time figuring out what Nikki was doing now because. . . Something something something,

3am

The problem was the title. ’NDangered was stretching it and that was the title of the third book. ’N Love was stupid but better than ’N Heat, her publisher’s suggestion. “I’ll take titles that sound like porno, Alex” she’d said in a planing meeting and squashed that real quick. Christie had already Googled words that begin with en, words that begin with in, and common phrases that start with in. If she went on much longer struggling with this title, than the fifth book was bound to circle back to ’N Heat. She rearranged the pillows so that two were under head and one was squeezed between her knees as she curled up on her left side.

4:01am

The problem was the book itself. Her fifth Nikki Vampyro novel, regardless of title, wasn’t coming as easy as she’d like. She had six weeks left to deliver and so far she had six single space pages of garbage. Literal literary digital garbage. Five pages of all the ways she could kill Nikki off. Bloody, battered, buried alive, bashed, burned, bludgeoned. Then a single page that said “All Work and No Play Makes Nikki a Dumb Bitch.”

5:46am

The problem was Christie wasn’t getting any sleep.

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1030pm

The shitty coffee that the hotel’s shitty coffee maker made burned bitter in the back of her throat.

“God, I wish Starbucks would deliver. Or was open this late.” She said to a blinking cursor on a blank word document.

The free coffee in the lobby wasn’t any better. And coffee was a necessity. Coffee made the writing go when the writing wasn’t going.

You gotta get your vitamin C’s and B’s. Caffeine, coke cum, and booze. Nikki added her two cents.

Christie shoved the heels of her palms into her eyes and rubbed until she saw spots. She hated arguing with Nikki, especially when she added descriptors like she was narrating, like she was writing.

“Write the damn book. Narrate that,” she said again to the still blank computer screen.

1:13am

Bronx Dagger’s eyes were the color of rye bourbon on and ice and always watery like he’d drank five of them back to back.

Well, that’s stupid.

Nikki hated those eyes. She wanted to rip them from his skull, throw them on the grimy ground of the barely lit back alley, and jump up and down on them not once, not twice but three or four times with her favorite purple latex combat boots.

That’s better.

Unfortunately, her boots were across town in her latest hotel room. The eye gouging would have to wait.

“Oh shit, Nikki.” Bronx wasn’t happy to see her. The feeling was mutual.

That’s pretty obvious.

Christie deleted that last four words.

“What do you want from me?”

That’s a damn good question. What do I want, Christie?

After 3 vodka tonics, she’d almost tricked herself into writing something halfway decent. And sometimes, if she could get another character to ask her directly, she could Nikki into telling her what she wanted and Christie could actually get some real writing done.

But she hadn’t had enough vodka yet. Luckily, there was most of a bottle left. It didn’t make a sound as she poured it over ice and filled another rocks glass.

“Fuck it,” she said tipping up the slippery cool glass.

Nikki snickered. Drink up, bitch.

The vodka went down smoother than the coffee.

330am

If misery loved company then what were Bronx and Nikki? They hated each other. He hated her because she usually left him bruised and penniless when the fuel left their fire. She hated him because she hated everyone. Everyone except Danny and he was never coming back. So why did she keep thinking of him?

Because you force me too.

You make it sound bad, to love someone and to miss that love when they are gone. It’s good they say, to have loved and lost.

How many of those fuckers have actually done that?

I think all of them.

You’re a real bastard, you know.

Christie paused for a moment. The cursor flashed on her screen like an angry god that fed on letters and was constantly hungry for more sacrifice. She could be a worse than a bastard if that’s what Nikki wanted.

Despite the pangs of loss and tears in her eyes, she was forgetting the color of his eyes, the scent of skin, the sound of his voice. It had been too long without him and too soon to be forgetting. That’s what hurt the most. She shoved another cigarette between her black painted lips and lit the tip like lighting a fuse. She needed something stronger and she better have by the end of that fuse.

God damn you, Christie. That was cruel.

Yeah, well, fuck you, Nikki. You’re the company and misery loves you.

Nikki laughed. My God, you’re a shitty writer.

Don’t I know it. I wrote you didn’t I?

Nikki didn’t respond. She was gone entirely.

Christie laughed alone and wiped tears from hers simultaneously.

4:56am

Finally satisfied, Nikki pulled a cigarette from his pack. She lit up and puffed deep. The bitter cheap smoke scorched her tongue and throat.

She loudly hacked up spit and mucus and spat on the floor disgusted. She rubbed the cig on his cold dead back.

“Fucking cheapskate.”

Now she had to go out and buy her a pack of her own. She should have known it wouldn’t have lasted long anyway. Bronx had never been one to satisfy her on his own. Never then and now, never again.

“So long, prick.”

She stopped typing not so much because she was finished as because her eyes closed and her hands stopped moving. She had enough command left to curl her knees up before she was fast asleep.